The first category, history is stories, is just mainly made up of the 100's of stories that are in the book. They vary anywhere from stories about commoners and kings, sons and mothers, heroes and villains, the famous and the failed, etc. He combines them in two narratives that criss-cross throughout the book, each story is about how people connect and separate, as cultures take shape and influence and change each other. History as global is about seeing the world as a whole. The whole world stays in view in almost every chapter and readers can analyze and connect what was happening all over the globe in all time periods. History as universal is where Fernandez discusses all elements of life, from science and art, to suffering and pleasure. History is a problem-posing discipline employs facts to make the readers think. The book is full of provacations, contested claims, debated speculations, open horizons, and question. From history is evidence the reader is encouraged to think and feel what it was like to live in each time period through the words, images, and objects. Finally in the last category, history enhances life, Fernandez believes that textbooks dont have to be hostile. He believes that they can be entertaining, and can encourage you to learn, and at times amuse you. Felipe then talks about how we adopt what we think are natural behaviors like wearing clothes, cooking food, and replacing nature with culture. Because of this we do what is natural to us. All the elaborate culture we produce generates new, intimate relationships with the environment we fashion and the life forms we exploit. The more that we change the environment, the more vulnerable we are to ecological unpredictable disasters. A result from failing to establish the right balance (exploitation and conservation) will lead to leaving civilizations in ruins.
Chapter 15 is titled, Expanding worlds: Recovery in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Chapter 15 starts off talking about the age of sail and how for almost the entire history of travel - winds and currents set the limits of what was possible : the routes, the rates, and the mutually accessible cultures. Many European maps of the fifteenth century depicted the Indian Ocean as landlocked- literally inaccessible by sea. Yet it was the biggest and richest zone of long-range commerce in the world. By the end of the fifteenth century however, European navigators had found a way to penetrate it. Meanwhile, the Atlantic was developing into a rival zone, with transoceanic routes ready to be exploited. Seafaring on the Atlantic would indeed transform the world by bringing cultures that had been torn apart into conflict, contact, commerce, and cultural and ecological exchange. In regions that escaped the catastrophes of the fourteenth century, long term population growth continued to strengthen states and economies. So it is not surprising that the world of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was a world in recovery and even a world of resumed expansion. To some extent, technological advances made up for- indeed, was a response to- decreased population. The long period of accelerated exchange in the Song and Mongol eras had equipped expanding economies with improved technology. Beyond the reach of the recurring plagues that stopped demographic growth in much of Eurasia, some of the most dynamic and rapidly expanding societies of the fifteenth century were in the Americas and Sub-Saharan Africa. EAST AFRICA: Ethiopia emerged relatively early from its period of quiescence. Southward from Ethiopia, at the far end of the Rift valley, lay the gold-rich Zambezi valley and the productive plateau beyond, which stretched to the south as far as the Limpopo River and was rich in salt, gold, and elephants. Like Ethiopia, these areas looked toward the Indian Ocean for long-range trade with the economies of maritime Asia, but their outlets to the sea lay below the reach of the monsoon system and, therefore, beyond the normal routes of trade. Further evidence of the effects of trade, lie inland between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, where fortified, stone-built administrative centers called Zimbabwes, had been common for centuries. Like Mali in West Africa, Mwene Mutapa was a landlocked empire, sustained by trade in gold and salt. WEST AFRICA: New states emerged in West Africa, following the decline of the old regional power, Mali. Gao was one of the great trading cities between the rain forest and the desert. Traders could now move around Mali's trading monopoly. The result of the first recorded European contact with Mali was a tragedy for the history of the world, for the absence of a strong West African empire undermined European's view of black Africans as equals. Gradually, Songhay succeeded Mali as the most powerful state in the region, but it never controlled as much of the Saharan trade as Mali had. As Muhammad Touray Askias ascended into power he promoted a modest sort of capitalism by concentrating resources in the hands of religious foundations, which had the personnel and range of contacts to maximize their holdings' potential. New canals, wells, dikes, and reservoirs scored the land. The states and cultures of the tropical forest and coast in the African "bulge" were confined to regional power and wealth. The trading post that Portugal opened at Sao Jorge da Mina, on the underside of the African bulge, in 1482, appeared on maps as a gilded, turreted fantasy city. The Kingdom of Kongo dominated the Congo River's navigable lower reaches, probably form the mid-fourteenth century. The Kingdom became hot to Portugese missionaries, craftsmen, and mercenaries. They gained territory and more importantly, slaves, many of whom they sold to the Portuguese for export. Although Ethiopia, Mwene Mutapa, Songhay, and Kongo were all formidable regional powers, and although many small states of the West African coast expanded commercially and territorially, little of this activity was on an unprecedented scale. Like some states in Eurasia, African empires grew at impressive rates and to impressive extents in part because they were in touch with other phenomena of commercial and political expansion: Songhay across the Sahara, Ethiopia and Mwene Mutapa across the Indian Ocean, the coastal trading cities and Kongo with the Portuguese. ECOLOGICAL IMPERIALISM IN THE AMERICAS: In 1972 inventive historian Alfred Crosby coined the term ecological imperialism and ever since then historians have used it to refer to the sweeping environmental changes European imperialists introduced in regions they colonized. THE INCA EMPIRE: The fastest growing empire in the late fifteenth century. They occupied Cuzco in what is today Peru, which became their biggest city and begun subjugating their neighbors. The Inca realm encompassed coastal lowlands and the fringes of the rain forest. To maintain the state, the Incas had to acquire new territories, leading to hectic and, in the long run, perhaps, unsustainable expansion. THE AZTEC EMPIRE: At the peak of the Aztec expansion the Aztec empire stretched from the Panuco River in the north to what is now the Mexican-Guatemalan border on the Pacific Coast and encompassed hundreds of tributary communities. The Aztec bureaucracy meticulously listed and depicted the ecological diversity of regions. From the "hot countries" in the south came ornamental feathers and jaguar pelts, jade, amber, gold, rubber, and resin for incense. Overlapping regions supplied cacao, the essential ingredient of the addictive, high-status drink essential at Aztec ceremonies and parties. The tribute system brought necessities as well as luxuries: hundreds of thousands of bushels of maize and beans every year, with hundreds of thousands of cotton garments and quilted cotton suits of armor. The Incas and the Aztecs did not benefit from technology. NEW EURASIAN EMPIRES: It was the borderlands that straddle Europe and Asia that nurtured the really big, really enduring new or resumed empires of the age, those of the Turks and Russians. THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE: Muscovy's sudden take-off in the second half of the century, when conquests of neighboring peoples turned it into an imperial state, over-shadowed early efforts at expansion. Once Ivan the Great took over he more than trebled the territory he ruled- to more than 240,000 square miles. TIMURIDS AND THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE: The Mongol supremacy had been a traumatic challenge to the Islamic world, shattering the reputation of Muslim armies, breaking the monopoly of Sharia or Islamic law, exposing the limitations of the clergy, and inspiring the religious minded to withdraw from the world in a spirit of resignation. Historian Ibn Khaldun produced one of the most admired works of all time on history and political philosophy, The Muqaddimah. Perhaps the most conspicuous mobilizer of steppeland manpower in Muslim service in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was Timur the Lame. By the time he died in 1405, he had conquered Iran, defeated the Ottoman Turks and put their sultan in a cage, invaded Syria and India, and planned the conquest of China. By weakening the Muslim sultans of Delhi, he liberated millions of Hindus. The fate of the Mongols shows how hard it was for a great Eurasian empire to survive in the aftermath of the Black Death. The Ottomans' great advantage was location. The heartlands of the empire were at the crossroads of some of the world's greatest trade routes, where the Silk Roads, the Indian Ocean routes, the Volga, the Danube, and the Mediterranean almost converged. Gradually, the Ottomans adapted to the environments that they conquered: agrarian, urban, and maritime. The direction of Ottoman conquests tilted toward Europe, extending over most of what are now Greece, Romania, and Bosnia, seeking to control the shores of the Adriatic and Black seas. THE LIMITATIONS OF CHINESE IMPERIALISM: The leader who emerged from the chaos of rebellion was Zhu Yuanzhang. Zhu's son, the Yongle emperor aggressively sought contact with the world beyond the empire. He meddled in the politics of Vietnam, fought Mongols, and enticed Japanese to trade. By consolidating their landward empire, and refraining from sea born imperialism, China's rulers ensured the longevity of their state. THE BEGINNINGS OF OCEANIC IMPERIALISM: Merchants took no interest in venturing far beyond the monsoon system to reach other markets or supplies. There were, first, the Northeast trade winds, which led to the resource-rich, densely populated regions of the New World, far south of the lands the Norse reached. There were also the South Atlantic wind system, which led, by way of the Southeast trade winds and the Weterlies of the far south, to the Indian Ocean. The technology to exploit the Atlantic's wind systems only gradually became available during a period of long, slow improvements to ships' hulls, rigging, and water casks in the thirteenth fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In West Africa, the Portuguese post at Sao Jorge da Mina, near the mouth of the Benya River, was close to the gold fields in the Volta River Valley, and the large amounts of gold now began to reach European hands. THE EUROPEAN OUTLOOK: PROBLEMS AND PROMISE: In some ways, indeed, Western Europe in the fifteenth century was beset with problems, such as: Recovery from disasters, plagues and severe climate. Humanism gradually became Europe's most prestigious form of learning. Europe's outreach into the Atlantic was probably not the result of science or strength so much as of delusion and desperation. IN PERSPECTIVE: BEYOND EMPIRES: The power of the state really did increase. One reason was improved communications. The state system deprived Europeans of unified command. The new routes pioneered in the 1490's linked the populous central belt of Eurasia to the Americas and Africa, and Europe to Asia by sea. We can see the beginnings of an interconnected globe- a world system- able to encompass the planet.
Chapter 16 is titled, Imperial Arenas : New Empires in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries imperialism changed everything. Around 500 years ago, man started to cross oceans and continents to come into mutual contact with new land and peoples. They swapped ideas and cultures and began to shape the world that we know today. MARITIME EMPIRES: The main maritime empires were the Portugal, Japanese, and Dutch. The goal of the empires was to gain control of, or power over, the places and people that produced valuable goods. The sea made it difficult and some were only able to seize limited parts. Some were able to colonize coastal territory along Seaborne routes, produce and ship commodities for their own profit. These empires flourished in mediterranean and maritime Asia. Technological improvements helped bring about new opportunities. New longer sea routes were navigated around monsoonal areas and the monopoly of the Indian Ocean came to an end. The discovery of the Gulf Stream helped bring about knowledge of the elements of wind and Atlantic system. Land Empires emphasized more on control of large amounts of people and land. Along with that came a large military investment, they needed people to staff numerous outposts and fund armies because the land and sea routes were vulnerable if unmanned. There was also a need for a massive capital investment which supported imperial colonies and helped build infrastructures. Superior technology became necessary to overcome resistance from natives.
As you can see from the information that I have provided the world would not be the way it is now without all of the conflict, contact, commerce, and cultural and ecological exchange that happened from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. Indeed there was alot of suffering and genocide but in the end everything worked out to make the world we live in today as modern and diversified as it is today.
WORKS CITED: Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe. The World. since 1300. 2. University of Notre Dame: 397-466. Print.
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ReplyDeleteThe World was published by Pearson Penguin.
Would like to have seen more discussion of Time Team America and History Detectives and what the latter may tell us about broader contexts.
More discussion of Diamond
Good job.